


What about BOB? : guilt, the "clear light" and the nature of myth in Twin Peaks

by amonitrate



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Incest, Meta, Murder, Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-01 22:02:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11495637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amonitrate/pseuds/amonitrate
Summary: In Twin Peaks, what starts as a simple whodunit – “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” - becomes complicated by the unveiling of a character that may or may not exist, either as a possessing spirit or as a personification of "the evil that men do." The critical response to BOB’s presence has been as fraught with uncertainty as that of the citizens of Twin Peaks when faced with the same dilemma...





	1. Questions in a world of blue

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in response to a critical article by Samuel Kimball published in the journal Genders. 
> 
> written in 2008. There are definitely things I would do differently if I was writing this today.

 

****I: Questions in a world of blue****

**  
**

In __Twin Peaks__ , what starts as a simple whodunit – “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” - becomes complicated by the unveiling of a character that may or may not exist, either as a possessing spirit or as a personification of "the evil that men do." The critical response to BOB’s presence has been as fraught with uncertainty as that of the citizens of Twin Peaks when faced with the same dilemma. Many critics view the narrative’s inclusion of BOB as a means for the show’s creators to sidestep the issue of incest and murder – that by laying ultimate blame for the killing of several young women at the feet of demon possession the show portrays the human host as innocent of committing the crimes and therefore at the very least shirks its duty to the horrific reality it sets in motion.  Diana Hume George writes "...far from holding responsible for their actions the men who abuse and kill under BOB's influence, _Twin Peaks_ lets them off the hook by reverting to a simplistic displacement to the supernatural." (1) Some critics go so far as to say that BOB’s presence in the show should be read as reflecting the "regressive politics" of the creators, who either are blinding themselves to or participate in the violent actions of Leland Palmer, BOB’s physical host.(2)

 

Samuel Kimball, in his article “ ‘Into the light, Leland, into the light': Emerson, Oedipus, and the Blindness of Male Desire in David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks'” locates the criticism on the heads of the characters rather than their creators.(3) In doing so Kimball avoids getting distracted by tangential judgments of the psychology of David Lynch, which while perhaps fascinating never tells the complete story of _Twin Peaks_ \- for despite his position as co-creator and arguably the more hands on partner, Mark Frost is usually forgotten in these analyses. Kimball allows the possibility that the characters in _Twin Peaks_ are not merely mouthpieces for the beliefs of their creators - always a dangerous assumption in fiction - but should be taken seriously as actors in their own right and analyzed as such. His reading of the scenes in episode 16 in which BOB, inhabiting Leland Palmer, confesses to the crimes and then leaves his host and the lawmen of Twin Peaks to the aftermath is at times quite nuanced. Kimball raises some incisive questions regarding the ability of the men in the series to deal with Leland Palmer’s crimes. However, in several key places Kimball’s article fails to grasp the complexity of the episode in question and so the structure of his analysis suffers.

 

Kimball starts his essay with a lengthy reading of Emerson's declaration that the beliefs of the previous generations have "become the sepulchres that entomb the present generation within the past" (4) which Kimball reads as Emerson's wish to blind himself to the fact that his desires are the same as those of his predecessors, that without learning from them he is condemned to repeat their mistakes. He then goes on to argue that _Twin Peaks_ "ironizes the vocabulary of transcendental vision in order to expose a certain idealization of masculine desire in relation to the role of the father." (5)  His main thesis is, quoted here at length, that

> [i]n parodying the Emersonian call to come "face to face with God and nature," to step into the light of "the sun [that] shines to-day," "Twin Peaks" provides an extraordinary canted commentary on the failure of a certain cultural tradition, particularly in the transcendental optimism and accompanying moralism of its American incarnation, to account for a certain blinded and blinding violence of the father - not the patricidal violence of the oedipal son nor his incestuous desire for the mother but the incestuous desire of the father for his daughter and his infanticidal violence against her person. (6)

He chooses to support his argument almost solely with his reading of Cooper's speech to Leland Palmer at his death in episode 16 of _Twin Peaks_ , and in doing so both obscures his point and reveals several major flaws in his argument. (7)

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 footnotes:

(1) George, Diana Hume. "Lynching Women: a Feminist Reading of _Twin Peaks_ ," in _Full of Secrets: critical approaches to_ Twin Peaks. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995. pp. 117.

(2)  See Plummer, Laura. "'I'm not Laura Palmer' : David Lynch's fractured fairy tale." _Literature/Film Quarterly_ 1997, viewed online at findarticles.com : http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3768/is_200401/ai_n8752092. This article raises interesting points regarding violence against women in Lynch's work without coming to any conclusions; however it erases BOB from the equation altogether and minimizes Leland's role in Laura's death, as if it was Lynch himself who did the killing.

(3) Kimball, Samuel. "'Into the light, Leland, into the light': Emerson, Oedipus, and the Blindness of Male Desire in David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks'," _Genders_. Spring 1993, 17-34.

(4) ibid p. 18

(5) ibid p. 19

(6) ibid p. 19

(7) In the interests of length I have not gone into the many areas of Kimball's analysis with which I agree and find quite insightful, instead limiting myself to the points with which I disagree.

 

   
  
---  
  
 

 


	2. Questions in a world of blue

 

****II: Speaking in Tongues****

 

Kimball's accusation of blindness lies primarily with his interpretation that "the question about Leland's desire, Leland's want, Leland's need, Leland's violence is displaced onto a question concerning the nature of Bob's evil being and the scope of his evil power; it is displaced onto a metaphysical question about the presence of evil...." (1) The question that troubles Kimball - why Leland Palmer killed his daughter - would be categorized by Angela Hague as a finite game, the kind played by all detective novels and crime dramas where a mystery is solved, a killer caught, a case closed. Hague uses Robert Carse's conception of finite and infinite play to interpret the difference between _Twin Peaks_ and the traditional detective story. In this reading, a finite game is one where each question has a necessarily closed ending, while an infinite game is one where each conclusion opens the play up to further questions.(2) The question of why men do evil things – why BOB kills – opens up _Twin Peaks_ into the category of infinite game, into the realm of the symbolic. Kimball accuses the law men of Twin Peaks of ignoring the first question – of blinding themselves to it – by asking the second; and while there is some truth to that statement, it is not the whole story. Kimball and __Twin Peaks__ ultimately are speaking two different languages, with all the misunderstandings this creates. Kimball speaks the language of crime drama and __Twin Peaks__ that of myth. In analyzing a myth, one must first and foremost understand that one is in fact not dealing with literal reality. By eliminating the possibility of myth in reading __Twin Peaks__ , Kimball's questions about the nature of violence and evil remain unanswerable.

 

On its face __Twin Peaks__ starts out as crime drama. This reading was emphasized by the relentless advertising campaign that accompanied the series’ debut – encouraging viewers to tune in in order to discover the answer to “Who Killed Laura Palmer.” However, this simple question did not conclude with an equally simple response – the surface answer to the question the crime drama asks is that her father, Leland Palmer, did the killing; but the increasingly disturbing incursions into the narrative by the character BOB disrupt this promise of an easy solution and then make it altogether impossible to cling to.

 

The backlash from the viewers after the well-hyped crime was supposedly solved was perhaps inevitable, though not necessarily deserved, because __Twin Peaks__ is not a crime drama, and was not from the start. Agent Cooper, ostensibly present to solve the crime, does none of the things a conventional detective is expected to do. He works from intuition, dreams, and synchronicity rather than fact and evidence alone.(3) The one character that does care about the evidence and scientific procedure familiar to the typical crime drama – Agent Albert Rosenfield – is portrayed as an outsider who might never understand or belong in the world of Twin Peaks. The audience is forewarned of the symbolic path the program will take when at the end of the second episode, they and Cooper alike are thrust into an eerie dream sequence where the victim herself whispers the name of her killer into Cooper’s ear, a solution that is instantly forgotten. Thus the creators attempted to signal to the viewer that the mysteries of Twin Peaks do not reside in the territory of resolution, that what they watch is not a crime drama at all.

 

Therefore Kimball’s insistence on the question of why Leland Palmer killed his daughter is perhaps asking the right question of the wrong show. Unlike, say, __Law and Order__ , __Twin Peaks__ never pretended to reality. From the start it placed itself in the realm of a created universe apart from but related to our own. To accuse the characters living within that world of ignoring the needs of ours is perhaps shortsighted and ultimately fruitless. One does not expect to gain a satisfactory, realistic answer to the question of what motivated the mythic titan Kronos to devour his children, because one realizes Kronos is not a person who existed in historical time and space. To begin to analyze why the titan did what he did one must first view him as a symbol and his actions as symbolic acts.

 

In __Twin Peaks__ the mundane and the profane almost always lead to or parallel the otherworldly, the mythic. Mike and Bobby, high school jocks, are doubled at least in name by MIKE and BOB, possessing spirits. The giant who appears to Cooper apparently inhabits a senile room service waiter. Each character, relationship, and plotline has its shadow self or double, whether played for laughs or for drama – a fact which is driven home by the presence of the imbedded soap opera many of the characters watch, “Invitation to Love,” which especially in the first season often parallels in melodramatic fashion what is currently happening in __Twin Peaks__ itself. Each situation may mask a deeper story. Windom Earle, Cooper’s insane former partner, initially appears to be seeking revenge, a standard crime drama plot; however as the storyline progresses it becomes clear his true goal is the acquisition of power from the mythic Black Lodge. Leland Palmer killed his daughter and two other girls, but so did BOB.

 ---------------------------------------------------

footnotes 

(1) Kimball, Samuel. "'Into the light, Leland, into the light': Emerson, Oedipus, and the Blindness of Male Desire in David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks'," _Genders_. Spring 1993, 23.  
  
(2) Hague, Angela. "Infinite Games: the Derationalization of Detection in _Twin Peaks_."  _Full of Secrets: critical approaches to_ Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery, 130-143. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995.  
  
(3) Several authors have commented on Agent Cooper's difference from the traditional detective. For a sample, see the essays by Hague and Nochimson in _Full of Secrets_. 

 

   
  
---  
  
 

 

 


	3. Abiding in that state

**III: Abiding in that state**

Kimball's article is built on his reading of a specific scene from the sixteenth episode of the series. In the scene in question, as Leland Palmer dies of a self (or BOB) inflicted wound to the head, Agent Cooper takes him into his lap and tells him the following:

> [Leland], the time has come for you to seek the Path. Your soul has set you face to face before the clear light ... and now you are about to experience it in its Reality, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect is like a transparent vaccum [sic], without circumference or center ... At this moment, know yourself and abide in that state ...Look towards the light, [Leland], look towards the light. (1)

Kimball suggests that "[i]n order to know himself, Leland must see with cleansed eyes, and for this reason Cooper urges him 'into the light,' wherein he is about to experience a salvic radience." (2) Labeling the light Cooper speaks of as Emersonian, Kimball reads the passage in question as uniquely American and transcendent in nature. However the writers of the scene indicate in the script that the passage Cooper recites is from the Tibetan Book of the Dead.  It is in fact a nearly word-for-word quotation from the sacred text. (3) In his notes to the article, Kimball indicates that he was working from his own transcription of the episode, and therefore apparently assumed Cooper's lines were a product of the writer's imaginations. Kimball fails to recognize the Tibetan passage and accuses Cooper of "quasi-mystical rhetoric." (4) If an author of a critical article was unable to recognize a passage from the Christian Bible in the text he was analyzing could his misreading of the scene's meaning and intent be easily overlooked?

As Leland dies, he sees a vision of Laura welcoming him into the light. Writing that "[u]nder the deathbead tutelage of Cooper, Leland experiences a vision of his daughter's apotheosis which Cooper's prosopopoeic language  _causes to materialize_ right before his eyes" (5) Kimball accuses Cooper of leading Leland Palmer into an Emersonian clear light which allows both characters to blind themselves to Leland's crime – a sort of purification in which the crime against Laura is erased. Other authors concur, citing the presence of the falling water of the sprinklers as a kind of baptismal anointing (6). The symbolic presence of water may indeed represent a kind of purification – as the opposing element, it literally extinguishes BOB’s fire. However, the intent of the Buddhist passage Cooper recites is not to purify the dying of their sins (sin, in the judeo-christian sense, does not exist in Buddhist philosophy) but instead to set the dying "face to face" with unvarnished Reality.

 

The dying consciousness experiences this clear light as the closest approximation to Reality that he can spiritually comprehend. For Leland Palmer, this pure Reality is manifested as the love of his idealized, unharmed daughter. Contrary to Kimball's argument it is not Cooper who causes this vision to appear to Leland, but Leland's mind which creates the vision for itself. Cooper acts as ritual guide in this scene and so is not absolving Leland of responsibility any more than a priest on death row offering last rites has the ability to absolve a criminal of his crime before execution. Cooper's act asks the question – could we too offer such compassion to such a one?

 

To return to Leland's vision and Buddhist philosophy for a moment, there is another way in which Kimball's ignorance blinds him to the scene's meaning. In the Tibetan Buddhist understanding codified in the Book of the Dead, the consciousness of the dead can be guided to enlightenment through grasping the true nature of Reality (reality without the illusions the mind creates) in this "clear light." However, this is not the end of the story. The Book of the Dead understands that most consciousnesses are not spiritually advanced enough at the moment of death to hold onto Reality long enough to be freed of illusion and enlightened. Therefore, the text goes on to detail the steps a lama, or spiritual teacher, can take to lead the consciousness of the dead person through the subsequent stages that lie between death and rebirth, during which there are more opportunities to realize enlightenment and therefore avoid rebirth.

This is far from Kimball's interpretation that "Cooper and Leland cooperate in effecting a compensatory apotheosis of the woman whose sacrificial victimage is repressed through the evocation of Emerson's transcendental faith that there is 'no disgrace, no calamity... which nature cannot repair.'"(7) Instead at the moment of death Leland is brought "face to face" with the products of his accumulated karma – not sin, but more accurately understood as the accumulated skillful and unskillful actions of a lifetime. Therefore when Cooper tells Leland to "know himself and abide in that state," this is what he is guiding Leland to do. To know himself would indicate that Leland is able and ready to recognize his own karma and not flee from it – Cooper's words as Leland takes his last breath are "don't be afraid." Contrary to Kimball's conclusion, Cooper is preparing Leland to meet the results of his actions rather than whitewashing the crimes and absolving him of his guilt.

  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
footnotes

  
(1) Quoted from an online version of the script for episode 16, written by Scott Frost, Harley Peyton, and Robert Engels, located at http://www.glastonberrygrove.net/texts/script16.html. It should be noted that in the script Ben Horne is listed as the killer, as the creators shot the reveal scenes with both Leland Palmer and Ben Horne as perpetrator in the interest of keeping the true culprit secret. Also included in the script are specific ritual details taken from the Tibetan Book of the Dead calling for the Cooper to turn the dying Leland on his right side, pressing against his carotid artery. These details were not carried through into the scene as shot but add a dimension to my argument.  
  
(2) Kimball, Samuel. "'Into the light, Leland, into the light': Emerson, Oedipus, and the Blindness of Male Desire in David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks'," _Genders_. Spring 1993, .  
  
(3) For comparison see an online version of the Bardo Thodol, known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, located at http://www.summum.us/mummification/tbotd/book1.shtml  :  
  
"O nobly-born (so and so by name), the time hath now come for thee to seek the Path [in reality]. Thy breathing is about to cease. Thy _guru_ hath set thee face to face before with the Clear Light; and now thou art about to experience it in its Reality in the _Bardo_ state, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect is like unto a transparent vacuum without circumference or centre. At this moment, know thou thyself; and abide in that state."  
  
See also commentary at http://www.angelfire.com/nd/SilverMoon/tibetan3.html.  
  
(4) Kimball, pg. 23  
  
(5) ibid pg. 22, emphasis mine.  
  
(6) see Blassmann, Andreas. "The Detective in 'Twin Peaks.'" published online at http://www.geocities.com/~mikehartmann/papers/detective.html  
  
(7) Kimball, pg. 23

 


	4. Face to face

 

 

**IV: Face to face**

**  
**

In the context of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Leland's vision of Laura welcoming him is not, as Kimball suggests, "a beatific vision that will seemingly undo the terrible violence he has perpetuated against her being." (1) Nor do "[t]he terms of this shared vision between Leland and Cooper evoke the transcendental imagery of Emerson," (2) for Cooper's speech does not cause the vision; it is meant to be a guide to what will occur naturally in the course of death. The vision is most definitely not shared between the two men, but is Leland's alone. When Kimball states that "nothing that has befallen a Leland Palmer – not even his rape and murder of his own daughter – cannot be cleansed, purified, transformed by 'the naked and spotless intellect'; within this light there is nothing – not even the broken body of Laura Palmer – that cannot be made living and whole again, nothing that the light cannot repair. So Cooper attests," (3) he only sees part of the picture. Biased by a Western, Christian, Emersonian understanding he conflates one man's vision for the vision of all men and one moment as the totality of what with the proper context would be read as the beginning, not the end, of a journey.

Cooper guides Leland Palmer to face that which Kimball accuses both men of blinding themselves to – the results of his actions. In _Twin Peaks_ the line between Leland and BOB is never clear. Just as knowing an abuser was himself abused does not excuse his subsequent crimes, knowing Leland was possibly possessed by a being called BOB does not wipe his slate clean, and to say so simplifies what the series clearly meant to explore. Laura is portrayed as having resisted the violent impulse BOB represents – by resisting BOB’s desire to possess her, Laura resisted becoming the abuser herself. She avoids the fate her father at some point accepted. That she could only do so by dying, by “letting herself be killed,” as Dr. Jacoby says, raises another set of questions that go beyond the scope of this article.(4)

When Cooper asks Truman whether it would be easier to believe a man killed his own daughter than to believe in the existence of an evil spirit, Kimball reads this as the characters choosing "..the easier, more comforting response" (5), and there may be merit in this argument. Cooper's words to Sarah Palmer, encouraging her to believe that the man she loved could not have done these things, also supports this stance. However, given the inclusion of the Buddhist passage and its implication of facing one's actions, I do not believe the evidence supports the idea that the writers meant for Leland Palmer to be viewed as blameless. Cooper's recitation from the Tibetan Book of the Dead leads me to believe that far from blind to Leland's culpability, the later scenes show Cooper was struggling to reconcile the loving father the town knew with the demon he witnessed at Leland's death and in his own visions.

In David Lynch's reworking of the murder scene in _Fire Walk With Me_ , Leland is portrayed as conscious of and involved in the torture and murder of his daughter. The following excerpt from the script to the film illustrates both Leland Palmer's awareness of his actions and Laura's resistance to becoming her abuser.

> 
>     [IN THE MIRROR](https://sites.google.com/site/amonitrate/tr_1198963104138)  
>     > 
>     Laura sees herself turn into Bob. Leland screams into space.  
>     > 
>       
>     > 
>     				 LELAND  
>     > 
>     			DON'T MAKE ME DO IT.  
>     > 
>       
>     > 
>     				 LAURA  
>     > 
>     			NO, YOU HAVE TO KILL ME.  
>     > 
>       
>     > 
>     				 LELAND  
>     > 
>     			I always thought you knew it was me.  
>     > 
>       
>     > 
>     				 LAURA  
>     > 
>     			 (into Bob in the mirror)  
>     > 
>     			NO! YOU CAN'T HAVE ME.  
>     > 
>     				(to Leland)  
>     > 
>     			KILL ME. (6)  
>     > 
>       
>     > 
>     

The film script suggests that Laura orders her father to kill her to prevent possession by BOB, which puts an ambiguous spin on the action; but Leland's admission that he "always thought she knew" he was her molester (that he was BOB), removes any doubt that Leland was at the very least aware of his crime against his daughter, and therefore complicit.  Leland Palmer, and not BOB, killed Jaques Renault. The character of Leland Palmer is far more complex than a mere puppet to an inhabiting evil. And while I believe Kimball's reading of Cooper's intentions in the scene following Leland's death is a valid one, I also think it oversimplifies what we see on screen. Such an interpretation does not leave room for ambiguity - eliminates the possibility that a human being can be capable of both great good and great evil. Despite his allowances for ambiguity and his sensitive exploration of Leland's character, in the end Kimball seems to wish to set up a false dichotomy - either Leland Palmer was guilty of this crime, was a bad man, or he was innocent - an interpretation that he is not alone in clinging to among writers grappling with _Twin Peaks_. And that is not what the show is about. _Twin Peaks_ allows for the possibility that Leland Palmer was both. An abuser capable of torture and murder as well as an abused boy who grew up to be a loving husband and father.

 

to be continued in part V

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
footnotes  


  
(1)Kimball, Samuel. "'Into the light, Leland, into the light': Emerson, Oedipus, and the Blindness of Male Desire in David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks'," _Genders_. Spring 1993, p 22.  
  
(2) Ibid., p. 22.  
  
(3) Ibid., p. 22  
  
(4) see for example Desmet, Christy. "The Canonization of Laura Palmer," in _Full of Secrets: critical approaches to_ Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery, 93-108. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995.  
  
(5) Kimball, p. 27  
  
(6) See the script for _Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me_ by David Lynch and Bob Engels, located at http://www.lynchnet.com/fwwm/fwwmscript.html. The exchange between Laura and Leland takes place at the site of her murder in scene 223.

 

 


	5. Oedipus and the question of why Leland killed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Note that the section on the "cycle of abuse" is something i would write very differently and more carefully today and I'm pretty sure the paper I cited is terrible.

  **V: Oedipus and the question** **of why Leland Palmer killed**  

Taking a moment to seek an answer to the question Kimball poses but is unable to answer himself, can we gain any insight into why Leland might have killed his daughter? What complicates the issue of Leland's crime is not only the explicit question of whether or not Leland Palmer should be held accountable for his actions in light of BOB's existence, but the implicit dilemma of whether the same compassion given to the victim (Laura) can be extended to the perpetrator of the crime (Leland), himself perhaps a victim of BOB. And this is where Kimball's argument falls short. By blinding himself (to use his own term) to the meaning of Cooper's speech to Leland in episode 16, Kimball's argument falters – he sees the scene in terms that are only finite, not infinite; surface, not mythic. While pointing out that Leland's confession raises the subtext of possible sexual assault at a young age by BOB (or more likely, a man inhabited by BOB), when he refuses to answer his own question regarding Leland's motivation for killing Laura, Kimball fails to carry his argument to its logical conclusion – fails to identify the crime as falling into the so-called cycle of violence, fails to ask why the abused becomes the abuser. In his failure Kimball shares in the blindness he attributes to the law men of Twin Peaks. 

Kimball argues that Leland plays the role of Laius, Oedipus's father, and that his murder of Laura echoes Laius's attempt to rid himself of his son. “In _Oedipus the King_ ,” Kimball writes, “Laius's infanticidal actions are acknowledged only _after_ he has been proleptically named a victim of his son...” (1) by the oracles. Contrary to the typical (often Freudian) reading of the story, where the plagues inflicted on the kingdom, Thebes, are connected to Oedipus's incestuous relationship with his mother, Kimball places the blame on Laius's actions, on the “uncanny, haunting reminders of the secret paternal violence of the state against the son.” (2) However, instead of linking this violence of the state with the patriarchal violence of men against women as portrayed in _Twin Peaks_ , Kimball attempts to link the Laius/Oedipus relationship with his earlier argument about the blindness of the Emersonian light.Kimball states that

[l]onging to see, Bob incarnates the blindedness of the person- a man, a father, a Leland - who, face to face with the light, cannot see in the child other than what Laius sees, an image of death and the 'chance' to turn this death back on the child. Longing to see, Bob incarnates the blindedness of those men who cannot see and who thus cannot repeat other than the same deadly 'future past.'(3)

Continually falling back on his flawed interpretation of the “clear light” as blinding instead of revealing, Kimball undermines his insights regarding the comparison of _Oedipus_ and _Twin Peaks_ as well his argument that the law men of Twin Peaks, by failing to ask the right questions regarding Leland's crime are therefore are blind to the truth of what they themselves are capable of.

To return to our exploration of the motivation behind Leland Palmer's crime, can we find any insights in the Oedipus story that Kimball overlooked? Leland Palmer certainly did not kill to gain the kind of power Windom Earle sought from the Black Lodge, a power comparable in a sense to the state power Laius wished to prevent his son from usurping. However Kimball's comparison of Leland to Laius could be interpreted another way: it is implied on _Twin Peaks_ that Laura had realized the corporal identity of her molester, her father, and was writing about him in her diary. This is confirmed in the events of _Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me_ , where Laura's horror over discovering that her father is her tormentor is terrifyingly depicted. In this reading, Laura's identification of Leland as BOB, as abuser, is a threat to that abuser's power, as the prediction regarding Oedipus is threat to Laius's throne.

Another possibility could lie in the more traditional emphasis on the Oedipus story's incestuous triangle between father, mother and son. In this view, perhaps Leland saw Laura as a rival for BOB's attention, which opens up an intriguing path of inquiry. There are obvious parallels to be drawn to the triangle of Laius/Jocosta/Oedipus; but Kimball does not take that route.

To step away from the Oedipus comparisons for a moment, there is another possibility. Perhaps Leland killed to gain another kind of power – the power of control over his abuser by asserting himself over one he perceives as weaker than he is, his daughter. This more mundane explanation falls into the pattern seen in the cycle of child sexual abuse. Victims of molestation often turn around and molest others in return. According to one paper, which I'll quote at length because of the relevance to the case of Leland Palmer,

There is a pervasive and enduring longing for an intense and most intimate closeness to another person, amounting to a ‘merging’, a ‘union’. This longed-for state implies complete gratification with absolute security against any dangers of deprivation or obliteration. However, the ‘pervert’ is convinced that such closeness inevitably involves a permanent disappearance of his existence as a separate, independent individual into the other person whom he perceives to be entirely psychologically acquisitive and consuming. The ‘pervert's’ reaction to the annihilatory danger of intimacy is: to withdraw into himself with the result that his relationships assume a narcissistic character, this in turn leaving him vulnerable to a sense of isolation, low self-esteem and depression; and to react with "self-preservative aggression" (see [Glasser, 1988](http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/179/6/482#REF20)) aimed at negating the annihilatory person. Since, however, this person is the one with whom he desires union, he protects this person from destructive intention by sexualising his aggression, thus converting it into sadism. It is for such reasons that the characteristic ways in which the ‘pervert’ relates to others is invariably narcissistic and sadistic, and always precludes true intimacy. (4)

This passage very vividly describes the portrayed relationship between Leland and his victims, noted especially in his disturbing mounting of Laura's coffin, his reaction to Laura's photograph (dancing with it and smearing his blood on the image), as well as his murder of Maddy Ferguson. Kimball picks up on the possibility that Leland Palmer was molested as a child, but fails to identify this as a possible reason Leland abused his daughter in turn.

Then, of course, there is the previously mentioned passage from the _Fire Walk With Me_ script, in which Laura appears to ask her father to kill her in order to prevent her possession by BOB.  This throws into further ambiguity Leland's motivation for the murder - it's possible in this light to view Leland's murderous act as an attempt to thwart BOB from infecting Laura with a fate Leland knew all too well. However, this scene can be interpreted as yet another way Leland is let off the hook for his actions - after all, his daughter begged him to do it. But once again one must not make the mistake of confusing a character's statements and actions for the beliefs of the creators - perhaps this was Leland's justification to himself. After all, both on the show and in the film, the murder is portrayed as horrifying - for Laura it is the culmination of her mounting terror and the realization that her abuser is none other than her father. Faced with this terrible knowledge the possibility that she would rather die than become what she fears is altogether understandable, though in my opinion it does not purge responsibility from Leland - after all, it was his actions that drove her to this point.

In a book-length interview with Chris Rodley, David Lynch addresses the very misunderstanding of the ramifications of BOB's existence on Leland's culpability that Kimball reiterates. As if channeling Kimball, Rodley comments that “[t]he great thing about the presence of Bob is that Leland can almost remain a nice guy. He's not horrible, he's been possessed.” To which Lynch replies:

He's a victim. Everybody that has done bad things is not all bad. It's just that one problem which becomes a little too great. People are always saying, 'He was such a nice neighbour. I can't believe he could do that to those children and to his wife!' It's always the way. (5)

And regarding the equally misunderstood _Fire Walk With Me_ , which has received criticism for its portrayal of violence against women, Lynch emphasizes the cycle of violence, the story of incest, and how the film is “[Laura's] take on that. That's what it was all about – the loneliness, shame, guilt, confusion and devastation of the victim of incest. It also dealt with the torment of the father – the war in him.” (6) Lynch's statements to Rodley regarding Leland, BOB and Laura appear to support my argument that Leland was not meant to be portrayed as guiltless of his daughter's murder - instead, Lynch and company have chosen the more nuanced middle road - where an all too human man is capable of horrifying acts.

Leland's motivations, like _Twin Peaks_ as a whole, remain open to multiple interpretations. Despite his extensive discussion of Leland's character, in the end Kimball pursues none of the above possible explanations for Leland's crime, instead focusing on the inability of the other characters to face these very issues!

 

to be concluded in Part VI...

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
footnotes

  
(1) Kimball, Samuel. "'Into the light, Leland, into the light': Emerson, Oedipus, and the Blindness of Male Desire in David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks'," Genders. Spring 1993, 30.  
  
(2) ibid. pg. 31  
  
(3) ibid pg. 32  
  
(4) Glasser, M et al. "Cycle of child sexual abuse: links between being a victim and becoming a perpetrator." _The British Journal of Psychiatry_ (2001) 179: 482-494, viewed online at http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/179/6/482#TBL1. The authors also note that  “75% of those who reported that they were victims of both incest and paedophilia were also perpetrators” and  “in this selected sample, the experience of being a victim of paedophilia may have a more powerful causative influence in giving rise to the subject becoming a perpetrator than does incest, and the joint experience of being exposed to both paedophilia and incest has the most powerful effect.”  This article notes that sexual abuse from outside the family apparently leads to greater levels of future molestation by the victims than abuse within the family, raising interesting questions about the impact of Leland Palmer's possible abuse at the hands of BOB or a vessel inhabited by BOB and its influence on his later abuse of his daughter.  
  
(5) "Suddenly My House Became a Tree of Sores: a Tale of _Twin Peaks_ ," in _Lynch on Lynch,_ ed. Chris Rodley, 179-180. London: Faber and Faber, 1997.  
  
(6) Ibid, p. 185

   
  
---


	6. Blind to the abstraction in human form

 

**VI: Blind to the abstraction in human form**

Kimball's reading of _Twin Peaks_ leads him to the conclusion that Leland Palmer and the law men of Twin Peaks are allowed to remain blind to their potential for violence (the desires of the fathers) because of their reliance on Emerson's purifying, forgiving "clear light," which condemns them to repeat the mistakes of the previous generations. Though his interpretation of the "clear light" has been shown to be flawed, Kimball may be correct in one respect: in the show and the film alike the characters (including the women such as Sarah Palmer, Laura's mother and Leland's wife) rarely explicitly acknowledge the fact of Leland's act of incest and its consequences, or the other undercurrents of family dysfunction that run through the town – such as Leo Johnson's battering of his wife Shelly, the neglect of James Hurley by his alcoholic mother, and the near-incest experienced by Audrey Horne at her father's brothel. These are not things to be discussed openly in polite small town society, these shameful secrets that Laura's death and Cooper's investigation begin to bring to light.

  
Only Cooper's comment to Truman during the discussion in the woods after Leland's death explicitly acknowledges Laura's secret. When Truman expresses difficulty with the concept of BOB, Cooper replies "Is it easier to believe a man would rape and murder his own daughter? Is that any more comforting?" (1) As stated earlier, Kimball reads this as Cooper choosing between two options (Leland vs. BOB), choosing an answer that Kimball considers the easier to deal with - the devil made him do it. Once again, Kimball's interpretation relies on a false dichotomy. Kimball assumes that the emphasis on BOB's existence and the pledge of the lawmen to continue to fight BOB indicates that they have chosen to accept the existence of supernatural evil _rather than_ confront the reality that a man they knew could do such terrible things. However, Cooper's statement wasn't necessarily an either-or proposition. As officers of the law, the men present (even small town Sheriff Truman) would be all too aware of the evil that humans are capable of inflicting on one another. What's new to them, what they grapple with in this scene, is the proof of a different kind of evil than they have dealt with before. With his rhetorical question to Truman, Cooper was suggesting that both options – the murderous father and the possessing spirit - were equally valid and equally disturbing. 

  
Incest and the cycle of family violence remains a near taboo subject in network television sixteen years after _Twin Peaks_ went off the air, portrayed most often in crime dramas where the focus is on investigation and punishment rather than the cyclical impact of the violence itself. Paradoxically this appears to be Kimball's unstated wish for Leland Palmer – that his crimes be brought to light in an explicit manner, illuminated through the channels of law, rather than fading with his (perhaps too easy) death _._ When the crime against Laura Palmer is viewed in the context of a cycle of abuse which BOB in part symbolizes, where the mistake of the previous generation (which Kimball conflates with the masculine desire of the fathers) would be the continuation of the cycle, it becomes clear that Kimball and other critics such as Diana Hume George have ignored Laura's significance and BOB's desire to possess her - possibly because she is a woman and therefore her own potential for violence overlooked.

  
A victim of incestuous abuse, Laura had the strength to recognize the danger that BOB posed and to resist it – her rejection of BOB where her own father failed is a symbolic rejection of becoming an abuser herself.(2) As he dies, Leland admires his daughter's strength, telling Cooper "They wanted Laura ... they wanted her, but she was strong... she fought them, she wouldn't let them in... She said she'd die before she'd let them ..." (3)  Laura seeks to break the cycle – she alone clearly sees the implications of what BOB and her father have wrought. That she is driven to view death as her only escape from this cycle could be seen as a reflection on the inability of our society to deal with the reality of family violence, and the narrow options available to a girl in Laura's position.

  
In the end BOB eludes narrow reading. He might exist as an independent entity, he might be the source of evil. He might be a symbol, a way to visualize the unanswerable question of why men do evil. He is most likely all of these things. Speaking of BOB in a comparison between _Blue Velvet_ and _Twin Peaks_ , Chris Rodley comments that "...the new element here seems to be that the evil is not even of this world. It literally comes from beyond..." which Lynch clarifies, answering "[o]r it's _an abstraction with a human form_. That's not a new thing, but it's what Bob was." (4) With this statement Lynch suggests that BOB should be read both literally and symbolically – confirming _Twin Peaks_ as a mythic story. The crimes in _Blue Velvet_ , while at times bizarre, were wholly human – the literal "evil that men do" – the kind of crime with which the law men of Twin Peaks would have been familiar. BOB however is a "new element" to these men – but as Lynch points out, not a new thing at all, if looked at from the standpoint of symbol and myth.

to be concluded in part VII

\---------------------------------------------------------------

footnotes

  
  
(1) Quoted from an online version of the script for episode 16, written by Scott Frost, Harley Peyton, and Robert Engels, located at http://www.glastonberrygrove.net/texts/script16.html. See scene 27.  
  
(2) I should have noted earlier my indebtedness to Diane Stevenson's article "Family Romance, Family Violence, and the Fantastic in _Twin Peaks_ , in _Full of Secrets: critical approaches to_ Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery, 70-81. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995, for emphasizing the importance of child abuse and family violence to the themes in _Twin Peaks_ in particular and David Lynch's oeuvre in general. Despite making the connection between child abuse and the development of multiple personalities, even Stevenson fails to connect Leland's abuse of Laura to his own (subtextual) abuse at the hands of BOB or to his possession, which could be read as an alternate personality. Referring to the scene depicting the death of Maddy Ferguson, she writes: "The split between Leland and BOB, if it is a subjective formation, could be Maddy's view of Leland as much as Leland's view of himself: victims of abuse may not only split themselves into different personalities as a defense mechanism but they may split the abuser in like manner..." (p. 76) Nor does Stevenson touch on the effects of the abuse on Laura or on Laura's resistance to BOB. Clearly, the subject of family violence in _Twin Peaks_ has yet to be fully explored.  
  
(3) Frost, et al. scene 26B.  
  
(4) "Suddenly My House Became a Tree of Sores: a Tale of _Twin Peaks_ ," in _Lynch on Lynch,_ ed. Chris Rodley, 179. London: Faber and Faber, 1997. Emphasis mine. 

   
  
---


	7. The evil that men do and the continuing story

 

**VII: The evil that men do and the continuing story**

If the show had continued into a third season, this issue of the nature of the "evil men do" would most probably have been further explored in the person of Cooper himself. In the scene following Leland's death, "Cooper affirms _our_ ability to fight evil," Kimball writes, "but his affirmation depends on the unity of the _us_ and the exteriority of the evil which are precisely what Leland's violence calls into question." (1) By this statement, Kimball reveals his deep misunderstanding of the themes that play out in _Twin Peaks,_ for he either overlooks or is ignorant of the trials Cooper undergoes in the final episode of the series. Referring to the horrifying conclusion, where Cooper, formerly the stalwart symbol of all that is good, sees BOB reflected back at him in a mirror, Chris Rodley remarks that "[i]t seems like he's lost it." However, David Lynch disagrees:

Well, the thing is, he hasn't. It's the doppelganger thing - the idea of two sides to everyone. He's really up against himself. People were really upset that it ended with an evil Cooper who'd been taken over by Bob. But that's _not_ the ending. That's the ending that people were stuck with. That's just the ending of the second season. (2)

The splitting of the character of Cooper into "good" and "bad" – into self and shadow, or doppelganger – in the last scenes of the series hints that a third season of Twin Peaks might have investigated the very question Kimball's article says the men of the town refuse to ask, the question of what evil they themselves are capable of.

  
Kimball states that "the Twin Peaks citizens assume that Leland has killed because he was been possessed by Bob. But why, then, does Bob molest and kill? What is his motivation? No one ever asks this question of Bob because he ... is too manifestly inhuman for his motivation to need explaining." (3)  Later Kimball suggests that by including BOB in the narrative, "[t]he victim is no longer the victim of Leland but of a transcendent evil; and thus the victim is no longer a single individual, Laura Palmer, but 'this beautiful world of _ours.'_ " (4). While in the confines of the series this point is somewhat true - because she is already dead, Laura never quite becomes an individual in the eyes of the audience, though she's clearly one to the townspeople involved - this is fully rectified in _Fire Walk With Me_ , where Laura's individuality is given life. Indeed, the film is Laura's story where the show was not, a fact which may have accounted for the film's lack of success - the audience was expecting a continuation of what they were familiar with. However, to return to the original point - far from closing off inquiry, as Kimball suggests, asking why BOB kills is to delve into all of these unanswered questions every human culture eventually pursues in some form, whether through art, religion, law or psychology.

By accusing the men of Twin Peaks of blinding themselves to Leland's crime in the pursuit of BOB's (his false dichotomy), Kimball ignores BOB's position as visual representation and symbol, as a narrative tool the creators of the series use to grapple with these very issues. The use of the supernatural in this case is far from Diana Hume George's accusation of simplistic displacement of responsibility, or Kimball's of blindness to reality. In myths, the supernatural acts as a means of explanation for the big questions that plague us, and these explanations are never to be taken only at face value. Therefore Leland's crime _is_ BOB's, and BOB's is Leland's. They are, to quote another of the show's otherworldly characters, "one and the same."

Kimball claims that "Cooper's Emersonian imagery... is profoundly compensatory. It is 'in the woods,' Emerson writes... that 'we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, - no disgrace, no calamity... which nature cannot repair."(5) Kimball's flawed identification of Cooper's speech to Leland with Emerson's purifying clear light has already been discussed. While Cooper's rapturous admiration of nature might indeed be interpreted as transcendental, contrary to Kimball's reading the reality of "these old woods" in the world of _Twin Peaks_ does not stand in for the Emersonian location of rationality and purity. Just the opposite, in fact. The mystery of the woods in _Twin Peaks_ is the mystery of the irrational, the uncanny, and the animal. The old forest is not a place of the safety of the conscious mind but of the treachery of the unconscious. As the source or home of the two Lodges (and therefore of BOB), the woods of _Twin Peaks_ can only be entered into and understood through symbol and dream – the very opposite of the enlightened rational mind.

Myths should be understood to work on more than one level. Therefore, to inquire as to the motivation of BOB via rational means is to fail utterly. To attempt to understand BOB only in a literal sense, as when Kimball wonders about his motivations, is to miss the point altogether. In the symbolic reality created by the show, the reality Kimball blinds himself to, BOB is said to feed on fear. The reason he kills is to gain that food – there is no more complex motivation for his actions than for any other hungry predator. However, that is not the end of the story, because at heart BOB is a symbol.

Picking up on this theme in his interview, Chris Rodley suggests that "...pointing the finger at Leland isn't really an answer at all," to which Lynch replies, "It's not an answer. That was the whole point." (6) The point which Kimball is unable to accept, focused as he is on the idea that _Twin Peaks_ should deliver concrete resolutions to the questions it poses. It should be noted that Lynch, always highly aware of the traps of language, chooses to form his answer with the indefinite "an" rather than the definite "the" – pointing the finger at Leland is most definitely not "the" answer, as it ignores BOB; nor is it just "an" answer – because definitive answers themselves are anathema to Lynch. Because in this show, mysteries are not finite problems to be solved, but infinite journeys. While discussing the nature of _Twin Peaks_ as an ongoing story, Rodley reinforces the idea of the show as infinite game, commenting that it "...made perfect sense, as the real killer was not flesh and blood, that the story would continue - almost forever. It defies resolution." Lynch agrees: "Right. That's a good way to think... Bob was one part of _Twin Peaks_ that could've lived on and been dealt with in different ways." (7) Of course, it never got the chance to do so. But to ignore these clear intentions in an analysis of _Twin Peaks_ 's themes is to do the show an injustice.

Psychology and law may ask why a man would kill his daughter, may be able to ferret out a rational explanation for the crime; but art offers the opportunity to explore these same issues on the level of symbol. So to accuse the story of avoiding the issue, of blinding itself to our everyday reality, is to ignore the symbolic medium through which the story tells its tale. Crime dramas by their nature are finite and rational; on the other hand, myths are infinite. Kimball cannot answer his own questions because he asks the right question of the wrong show - he asks a myth why it is not a crime drama.  Myths are a means we as a species have chosen to grapple with the unanswerable questions that face us. Why men do evil is just one of these questions. In the end, Kimball asks why one individual dies and then accuses us of blindness if we inquire into the nature of death itself.

  


the end!

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------

footnotes

  
(1) Kimball, Samuel. "'Into the light, Leland, into the light': Emerson, Oedipus, and the Blindness of Male Desire in David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks'," Genders. Spring 1993, 28. emphasis original.  
  
(2) "Suddenly My House Became a Tree of Sores: a Tale of _Twin Peaks_ ," in _Lynch on Lynch,_ ed. Chris Rodley, 182. London: Faber and Faber, 1997. emphasis original.  
  
(3) Kimball, p. 23  
  
(4) Ibid, p. 28, emphasis original.  
  
(5) Ibid p. 22, emphasis original  
  
(6) _Lynch on Lynch_ , p. 181  
  
(7) Ibid, p.181  
[  
](http://amonitrate.googlepages.com/bibliography)

   
  
---


End file.
